If you write a story, your authorship is protected with copyright. But when you use ChatGPT to write it? Things can get a little dicey.
We’ve seen endless debate about the risks of AI, along with the technology’s new influx in legal services, banking, and pretty much every other field. Copyright issues involving AI, however, demonstrate its presence in the creative world.
Recently, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) actually registered a copyright for an artistic work where a co-author was an AI technology. Confusing, right? In the US, such an action might not fly.
Paul Roetzer, CEO of the Marketing AI Institute, wrote a lengthy LinkedIn post that helps make sense of the latest developments at the US Copyright Office when it comes to AI: “If you’re using generative AI tools to create content — articles, blog posts, books, images, software, songs, videos, etc — you do not own that content, according to the U.S. Copyright Office,” he explained.
You could see the dilemma. How original is your written or artistic work, if you used AI to create it? We’re so used to seeing ChatGPT and other AI tools in the creative process — but even the government saw blurred lines when it came to copyright.
The US Copyright Office has been receiving requests from other government agencies as well as the public to explore the topic further. And the cherry on top? Tons of new copyright applications for creations that used AI.
This urged the office to release new registration guidance with a few new considerations for copyright applications for creations using AI tools:
- AI isn’t an author. “Copyright can only protect material that is the product of human creativity Most fundamentally, the term “author,” which is used in both the Constitution and the Copyright Act, excludes non-humans.”
- Prompts aren’t enough to claim authorship. “If a work’s traditional elements of authorship were produced by a machine, the work lacks human authorship and the Office will not register it.”
“Users do not exercise ultimate creative control over how such systems interpret prompts and generate material. Instead, these prompts function more like instructions to a commissioned artist — they identify what the prompter wishes to have depicted, but the machine determines how those instructions are implemented in its output.”
- Some AI content has enough human authorship to be copyrighted. “In these cases, copyright will only protect the human-authored aspects of the work, which are “independent of” and do “not affect” the copyright status of the AI-generated material itself.”
- Copyright applications must disclose AI activity. “The answer [copyright approval or rejection] will depend on the circumstances, particularly how the AI tool operates and how it was used to create the final work. This is necessarily a case-by-case inquiry.”
Still, these new guidelines aren’t the end of the line. AI’s presence in so many industries have given rise to endless questions from developers, researchers, creators, and lawyers. That’s why the US Copyright Office plans to host a roundtable to answer more questions throughout the spring.
Bottom line? AI tools are innovative and efficient, but as Roetzer advises: “talk to your IP attorneys” before using them for anything copyrighted.
Read Roetzer’s full post here.
